A personal channel of a user is stored in a memory and contains personal channel data that provide information about linear and/or non-linear content items which the user likes or explicitly dislikes. For instance, a group of certain television (TV) programs are bundled into the personal channel. Instead of zapping through all available broadcast programs, the user can zap through his personal channels. For instance, a user has set up a personal news channel, a personal cartoon channel and/or a personal movie channel. Due to the fact that the amount of available content items continues to increase, such personal channels become an increasingly important tool to a user, as they offer him the possibility to quickly find a content item of interest.
In particular, a personal channel can allow one or more users of a recorder employing hard-disk technology to independently define a plurality of content items, which are similar to existing broadcast programs identified by the personal channel, but which are typically filled with recorded broadcast or from downloaded internet content. Such a personal channel is personalized, not only due to the fact that the user creates his own personal channel, but also by the fact that such a personal channel may be equipped with a recommender. This recommender learns the taste of the user of the channel by user feedback, either explicitly or implicitly, and serves to fine-tune the content of the channel.
Creating a personal channel is, for instance, done by a user by simply choosing a program from the electronic program guide (EPG) and indicating that she/he wants to create a new channel with this program. This initial program serves as a seed, and more, similar programs will be selected and/or recommended for adding to the personal channel.
A linear content item is, for instance, a broadcasted TV program or a broadcasted radio program. In contrast to a non-linear content item, a user cannot control the linear content item during broadcasting. However, he may record a linear content item and watch it later on. A non-linear content item, for instance a video content, is available from a content item source like a computer-implemented network, such as the internet or a local area network, or from a computer-implemented server. A user can choose which non-linear content item he wants to see and can control play back of the chosen non-linear content item. Thus, the term non-linear content is used to indicate video content that is not distributed via broadcasting but via other means, usually via internet streaming or download.
Metadata belonging to a linear content item is, for instance, information about a main actor, a title, a genre, significant persons and so forth. Usually, metadata is present in the form of character strings. For example, a metadata piece is a single-valued feature value pair such as {genre=“movie”} or a multi-valued feature such as {actor=“Al Pacino”, “Robert de Niro”}.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,005,565 describes a search tool that enables to search an electronic program guide and the Internet with one search. The search tool can automatically select filter elements from predetermined program elements, namely user defined search strings, such as a title or a subject. The automatic selection of such filter elements is based on a user selected program from the electronic program guide. The selected filter elements are used for search.